Brandon opened his hand an inch above the griddle, testing the heat. “I was in a dark place last year. Took it out on you.”
“No, you didn’t.” Maggie dumped the blueberries onto paper towels. “You took it out on yourself, and I reacted. I let my fear of going broke and all that went with it infect everything. What I did, how I felt, how I thought.”
“My lack of faith in my future—our future—affected you. I didn’t see that. I was caught up in my own stuff.” He pulled his hand from the heat and turned to her, his eyes dark, filled with pain. “I was out of work and I let pride get in the way of making good decisions. I didn’t do right by you, Maggie.”
She patted the blueberries dry, grateful that she had something to do. “I don’t want you coming back to Knights Bridge and working for your family just for me.”
“There’s no better reason, is there? Come on. Let’s get these boys fed.”
Maggie mixed the dry and wet ingredients, and Brandon dropped the pancake batter onto the hot griddle while she sprinkled on a handful of the freshly picked blueberries. While they waited for the bottoms to brown, he leaned against the counter, holding a spatula. “What are you going to do with your best friend marrying a multimillionaire and your sister marrying a billionaire?”
Maggie took a breath. What would she do? She scooped up another handful of berries. “You’re jumping the gun with Phoebe and Noah.”
“Nope.”
In spite of her concern for her sister and her emotional state—the risks of getting involved with a man as complicated and intense as Noah—Maggie liked hearing the confidence in Brandon’s voice. She watched him flip the pancakes, smelled the sweetness of the heated, softened blueberries.
“What’s on your mind, Maggie?” he asked.
“Phoebe and Noah…I don’t want him to break her heart.”
Brandon leveled a steady gaze on her. “What if she breaks his heart?”
Maggie opened a jar of maple syrup that her mother had made in the spring from her own trees. Was he talking about Phoebe and Noah, or about himself and her? She didn’t want to read too much into his words. Being physically close to him had her in a mess.
“Noah’s the one who left Knights Bridge,” she said. “Phoebe’s still here.”
“Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe Phoebe’s got to give a little, too. See the possibilities.”
“They’ve only known each other a few days.”
“Instead of all their lives?”
Before Maggie could respond, he grabbed a platter and flipped the pancakes onto it, then dropped more batter onto the griddle. She added the wild blueberries, wondering if he was right about Phoebe. About her. About them.
He went to the mudroom and called out the back door for the boys to come in for the pancakes. “Get them while they’re hot.”
Maggie watched him return to the griddle, wink at her as he picked up his spatula, and she realized she was in danger of falling in love with him all over again.
*
Phoebe worked in her backyard when she got home from the library. Pruning, weeding, checking for insect damage. It was a beautiful evening, and she appreciated having time to herself.
Needed time to herself.
After her sisters had left that morning, she’d checked with the library’s part-time custodian, a retired machinist and avid reader, but he didn’t know a thing about any hidden room. His predecessor hadn’t mentioned it. He’d died last year. Phoebe remembered him as a solid, unimaginative man. He could have cleaned the hidden room periodically and not thought twice about it.
She went back inside. She’d stacked up the books that she and Noah had knocked over. Her skin burned when she thought of sitting on the table with her dress half off.
What was he doing now in San Diego?
She grabbed a Diet Coke out of her refrigerator and put the cold bottle against her cheek. She sat at the table. It stood to reason that someone who’d created a hidden room in a library would like to read. Seventy years ago, Grace Webster had buried herself in classic adventure tales while her world disappeared around her, literally scraped, burned, razed and carried off. She’d read The Three Musketeers, Scaramouche, The Scarlet Pimpernel.
Phoebe wondered if Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt and Helen MacInnes had fired the imagination of her seamstress, diverted her on a bad day, entertained her on a good day.
Maybe she’d collected the books for someone else or just hadn’t gotten around to reading them.
Who was she?
As Phoebe fingered one of the sewing books, she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d had when she’d first discovered the attic room—that somehow the woman who’d sewn there, dreamed there, had felt trapped by life in Knights Bridge.
Had she abandoned the life—escaped the life—Phoebe was now living?